This invention is concerned with formation of useful wood products, including boards and other types of lumber from relatively small diameter logs or the like, and more particularly, to producing such products from peeler core logs which are the center portions of logs from which veneer products in sheet form are cut or sliced from the perimeters of logs until the central core thereof is too small for further production of veneer sheets. Logs from which veneer sheets or strips are shaved or otherwise formed usually are of uniform length, such as, for example, eight feet six inches. Depending upon the thickness of the veneer sheets produced from such logs, and also considering the value of the types of wood which are formed into veneer sheets, the peeler cores which remain at the end of the veneer production operation are anywhere from four and one-half inches to eight inches in diameter but these dimensions are intended to be exemplary rather than specific. Various uses have been made of such peeler cores without particularly giving consideration to the most efficient or economical use of the same to form useful products.
A similar problem also has been present in the lumbering industry, for example, relative to the formation of useful wood products from small diameter logs. For example, logs five or six inches or slightly greater in diameter are useful in the lumbering industry because the trees are not of great age and there is considerable abundance of such size. Examples of solutions to the use of small logs of the size referred to are formed in prior U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,304,971 to Pease, dated Feb. 21, 1967 and 3,452,793 to Wexell, dated July 1, 1969. Several problems are present in the use of small diameter logs in accordance with the aforementioned patents, however, as compared with forming useful wood products from peeler core logs. One such problem is that frequently the small diameter natural logs are crooked or non-cylindrical. Another is that, especially in accordance with the aforementioned patents, several passes of the logs through sawing apparatus are necessary to form desirable products such as by passing the logs through the sawing apparatus more than once, as distinguished from a single passage, in order to form a useful product as readily can be seen from the illustrations in the aforementioned patents.
In contrast to the foregoing, the present invention offers considerable improvement and greater efficiency in the production of useful wood products from peeler core logs, details of which are set forth in the following specification.